Metal Reviews

After listening to Born Again I had noticed, that there is a lot that is underappreciated in Non-Ozzy Sabbath. I know you all have your favorite lot of albums from Dehumanizer to Seventh star, but what do you believe to be their most drastically overlooked album in their back catalogue. How often do you listen to it and do you see it as on par with Ozzy-era Sabbath?

The Mob Rules is equal to their best Ozzy output, and it is easily the worst album Dio ever recorded with them, but I haven't heard TDYK yet.

I grew up on that album so I know it fairly well, though I have to say it's a good album by any standards. Songs like Falling off the Edge of the World and Sign of the Southern cross, really take me back even though some say it's just rehashing Heaven and Hell. I think both albums share that rock-tinged feeling, but overall I'd have to say I prefer Mob Rules over Heaven and hell.

Tyr

The first "real" metal song I probably ever heard that wasn't beaten into my head from insane overplaying on the radio was likely "wishing well."

I just don't care for slow music myself, not in the heavily distorted guitar format anyway. A song has to be fairly busy on the vocals to overcome that in the mix. Even "lonely is the word" I have only heard less than a half dozen times.

I just remember being bored when I heard it for the first time and haven't really shaken that feeling since. There are production tricks to make slower songs have a faster pace than they do, but unfortunately Martin Birch just doesn't have that instinct, I don't think. And give everyone a hint that might care, boosting the bass frequencies on a slow song is a bad idea.

I do think it is a good album myself, but honestly, there are three songs on there that I like listening to and working with. The extremely boxy production demands a remix from the first bar of the first song.

And yes, it is better than any Ozzy album still. Ozzy's one octave range, BS's endless jamming early on, the long ass resonating notes and sparse use of the whole scale, mixed with a slow pace is a recipe for me not liking an album, this makes the Dio years really special for me. Dio was a producer himself and I believe helped shape that material into what it was. I don't like songs like "The Jack" by AC/DC no matter who does them.

I can't remember who it was exactly, but Geezer did not play Bass on the demos for the songs and he subsequently used those demos as guides on how to play his bass parts on H&H, I think this dramatically would have changed the pacing of the songs and it makes H&H seem faster than MR in my opinion.

This is a very well thought out response, and I applaud you're honesty in that statement. The only thing being is that Dio era Sabbath lacks that certain darkness, the gloomy and doleful nature that epitomized the albums such as Master of Reality and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. I don't wish to speak much about Ozzy era Sabbath in this thread, but while fragments of those days remain in their latter albums, I wonder how much of it will truly be remembered in latter years. I came to Sabbath late in my life, and I really just discovered albums like Seventh Star and Born again about two years ago.

I can't stand Tony Martin Sabbath. I've tried and tried, but his vocals ruin it for me.

I guess a majority of the people do not like Tony Martin era Sabbath. I am one of the few who just loves every album they've done with him. To me, almost everything Sabbath have done w/o Ozzy has been overlooked and I never understood why. Not that I dislike Ozzy era Sabbath, I've just found their albums without him to be superior. Dehumanizer and Headless Cross are my personal favourites (and drastically overlooked albums) and I would place them above any Ozzy era Sabbath. In fact I would take any Sabbath album w/o Ozzy over Sabbath with Ozzy.

This.

My favorite post Mob Rules Sabbath (not counting Devil you Know). Crazy, I know.